Andrew Bird

There was always something very painterly to me about Andrew Bird, I thought this the first time I heard him – I felt it very much when I saw him perform. Firstly, most obviously, the way he worked as one-man-band/accompanist, using the loop pedal to set up guitar chug or violin waft and then adding several other layers, including his own voice and whistling. Here was a guy daubing in sounds, creating layers, improvising within the confines of the song – he had a structure (canvas) but he could colour with the sound (almost) wherever/whenever/however he wanted. My analogy might be straining – but whenever I’ve heard Bird I’ve had this imagine, held onto it; this idea of him as sound painter.

Add to the fact that he works in different ways – solo, band, accompanist – and is creating different things too (pop songs, instrumental works that show off his classical-music upbringing).

Here is something that is about as painterly as Bird has ever been, Canyon is the first in a planned Echolocations series. He recorded this album in a canyon. What’s next? Well, apparently, after his visit to Coyote Gulch canyons in Utah, the next concepts (and Echolocations) will include River, City, Lake and Forest.

Canyon is entirely wordless – so it’s a step on (or a step removed, perhaps) from 2013’s I Want To See Pulaski At Night – and it’s leaving a very long gap since his last album of self-penned songs.

But it’s still a very recognisable Bird. His version of the colonial spirit is there with Before The Germans Came, the rather gorgeous Rising Water feels, in part at least, like the ideas he’d layer in and around a vocal; the sparseness created by leaving word out of the, er, picture helps in pointing to the fact that this is an album based around sound – and the ideals around and in and of sound/s.

If that makes it feel much more like a project or a concept than an album, well, that’s true. It also links it to that painter’s idea, the vision of Bird as artist and art-maker. His fingerprints are all across this. These are, then, musical prints as much as they’re pieces of music – ideas he’s had before, ideas he’ll reuse again, sounds he’s coaxing that come from the music he’s heard and made, and that will come to make more sense when we hear the future volumes in this series – and can then (more acutely/accurately) spot the impact of the environment on the recording.

But I love this. It’s full of gorgeous space. And it’s Andrew Bird playing in his riveting way – taking us through moments where the natural percussion of the flow of water becomes a star (Sweep The Field) and sometimes returns for more of a cameo (The Canyon Wants To Hear C Sharp).

I look forward to hearing (and hearing more – and sometimes less – and always in a different way) the future volumes.